


sundays, starlight, and other small magics

by SheOfBadIdeas



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24633886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheOfBadIdeas/pseuds/SheOfBadIdeas
Summary: At age two, Aelwyn learned how to say the incantation required to cast the Light cantrip. At two and a half, she learned how to say her little sister’s name. At seventeen, she’s still learning how to say she’s sorry.
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Aelwen Abernant
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73





	1. part i

Her first real sentence was an incantation.

It hadn’t been productive of any real magic, of course; the words lacked knowledge, lacked intent, and as such held no power when spoken from her mouth. But Arianwen and Angwyn were overjoyed that their months of hard work had paid off, that Aelwyn had absorbed their teachings and regurgitated their words back at them. It was nothing more than simple mimicry, but to her parents, it indicated Aelwyn’s promise as a wizard.

She was two years old, and she learned the words to the _Light_ cantrip before she learned her numbers. Six months later, she learned a new word when Arianwen came home with a pink, screaming lump cradled in her arms.

“This is Adaine,” her mother said. “She’s your new sister.”

“Add-eyene,” Aelwyn parroted, reaching out with chubby fingers toward the wailing bundle of fabric. She didn’t know what the word “sister” meant, but she was fascinated by the creature nonetheless. Aelwyn repeated the name she had learned, still reaching for Adaine, tiny little palms waving frantically. “Adaine, Adaine,” she mumbled, fingers flexing and grasping at the air between them.

As she spoke, a faint aura of protective energy materialized around the howling infant. The shield wobbled and shivered, too weak to offer any real safety, but it was there. Arianwen gasped. Angwyn, whose face had remained impassive throughout the entire exchange, smiled faintly.

Aelwyn had cast her first spell.

Years later, at seventeen, Aelwyn mumbles the words to defensive spells almost absentmindedly, casting wards by force of habit the way some people tap their feet or bite their nails. It feels like dancing when she speaks them, the movement of the incantations against her tongue so comfortable as to be second nature.

But as familiar as she is with abjuration, she is equally a stranger to emotional intimacy. She struggles with baring any part of her soul to another person, with willingly exposing her vulnerabilities when she has spent so long learning how to enrobe herself in protective magic.

So when Adaine asks her _will you be my big sister?_ , Aelwyn feels a dozen spells leap to her lips, feels the magic inside of her itching to guardsaveprotect, but she cannot make herself say the thing that she knows Adaine deserves to hear: _I’m sorry that you had to ask_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is incredibly self-indulgent because i love adaine and think aelwyn is an amazing character. i wanted to explore the abernant sisters' reconciliation and the ways that they would stumble through it.
> 
> also, I'm spelling it Aelwyn even though the tag is Aelwen. sue me.
> 
> tumblr is rubyofhouserocks.tumblr.com  
> feel free to send me prompts or messages!


	2. part ii

Aelwyn moves in with Adaine, and Jawbone, and Sandra Lynn, and Fig, and Kristen, and, and, and.

And it is loud, and it is overwhelming, and it is so entirely foreign. There are little bursts of laughter hiding in the spaces between the cupboards where Aelwyn is used to hearing whispers. Jawbone whistles while he makes breakfast in the mornings. Jawbone makes breakfast in the mornings. Aelwyn always has a place at the table of Mordred Manor, and now she sits next to Adaine instead of across from her. She shares a bunkbed with her sister.

She is rarely, if ever, alone.

It gets to be too much in less than a week; Jawbone constantly asking if she needs anything, Kristen trying too hard to be welcoming, Tracker’s silent glances and obvious unease with her presence. Adaine looking at her like Aelwyn’s a wild animal and she isn’t sure whether it will sniff her palm or sink its teeth into her flesh. It makes Aelwyn too aware of all of the ways she’s fucked up in the past and sends her gut roiling in shame. She can’t stand to meet their eyes when it feels so much like staring in a mirror.

She sneaks away after dinner one night, after another meal where everyone is smiling and talking over each other, and sits by an aspen in the graveyard until even the dead feel like more company than she can handle. So instead she walks behind the house, sits halfway down the slope of Haversham Hill, and looks out over Elmville.

It’s late enough now that most of the city is sleeping, and the horizon bleeds into the night sky until the sparse lights illuminating the houses look like new, unnamed stars. It has a quaint beauty to it, charming in a way that Aelwyn is sure would calm her nerves if she didn’t feel so disconnected from it all. The town has never really felt like home to her—she has no nostalgia for the root beer floats of Basrar’s, no childhood friends who played _Cops and Rogues_ in the courtyard of the Abernant residence. Fallinel wasn’t any more welcoming; it was the location of her people, sure, but also of her imprisonment.

For Aelwyn, the idea of home has always been a nebulous one. She has always felt unmoored from physical space, finding comfort instead in her own power. It used to be enough to center her, but now she is surrounded by people who clearly find home in each other—who can turn a crumbling, haunted manor into something more simply by inhabiting it together. It makes her painfully aware of how hollow she is inside, how much she is defined by her own negative space. It makes her ache for the love she has been denied and the love she has denied herself. Mostly, it makes her crave that sense of _belonging_ somewhere.

She knows she doesn’t deserve forgiveness and she doesn’t deserve trust. She knows she may never deserve those things. But she thinks that, maybe, the residents of Mordred Manor are willing to give them to her anyway. Maybe Adaine is willing to give them to her.

Aelwyn just isn’t sure she would be able to accept them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahahahahahaha this is even more indulgent than the last chapter. i was living the fantasy, y'all, sorry


	3. part iii

Aelwyn looks up from her book as her bedroom door opens. Adaine doesn’t greet her; instead, she merely walks in and begins to rummage through her desk, presumably looking for her class notes or some spell she’d been working on. That in itself is not unusual, but Aelwyn still senses that there is something off about her sister, something different. It takes her a moment to place what it is.

“That’s my shirt,” she says as she realizes, her genuine surprise evident in her voice.

“Oh, is it?” Adaine asks sarcastically, and her tone is too sharp for it to just be banter, though Aelwyn suspects she doesn’t mean it to be. It’s just that it’s too soon, still, for her to know how to navigate the thorny labyrinth of their relationship without some collateral damage. Time and shared trauma have softened her edges, but a dull knife is still a knife. “I’m stealing it, Aelwyn. You wouldn’t know, but that’s what younger sisters _do_.” She seems to find whatever it was she was searching for, because she shuts her desk drawer and stands up straight.

“Whatever. Just don’t ruin it with your Aguefort-ness,” Aelwyn says, because she doesn’t quite know how not to be cruel yet, either. But her heart is suddenly beating a rabbit-kick rhythm against her ribcage, and she has to bite the inside of her cheek hard enough that she tastes old pennies in order to keep the hot tears behind her eyes from spilling over.

Adaine doesn’t seem to notice, just rolls her own eyes and mumbles something that Aelwyn can’t hear. Still, Aelwyn doesn’t think she’s imagining the way Adaine’s shoulders relax a fraction as she walks out of their shared room. Wearing Aelwyn’s shirt. Aelwyn’s shirt that she stole, like younger sisters do.

As soon as the door closes, a rogue tear slips down Aelwyn’s cheek, and she scrubs at it before it reaches her chin.

 _It’s just a stupid shirt_ , she tells herself. Even she can tell that she’s lying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first thing i wrote for this, because the inciting action for this fic was imagining Aelwyn getting emotional whenever Adaine does stereotypical sister things.
> 
> tumblr is, as always, rubyofhouserocks.tumblr.com. shoot me a message!


	4. part iv

It’s about a month into her stay at the manor, now, and Aelwyn makes a habit of disappearing into the background. She’s trying her damnedest to become just another spectre haunting the winding halls of the house, to be another ghost lingering imperceptibly near the dominion of the living. If she treads lightly enough, she hopes, then maybe she won’t kick up the light film of dust that’s starting to settle on her history.

Tracker doesn’t even look at her twice anymore, eyes settling on Aelwyn only long enough to register her presence and then sliding away, back to Kristen or Jawbone or someone else who actually deserves her attention. It helps Aelwyn breathe a little more easily, but she’s miles away from any kind of sense of belonging; she’s pretty sure her presence is an acceptable inconvenience at best. She knows that her feeling of displacement is only exacerbated by her inability (unwillingness) to connect with her housemates, her conversations with them largely limited to pleasant banalities. Rectifying that problem seems a herculean task, however, when Aelwyn knows how off-putting most people find her genuine personality. It’s safer, she thinks, if she sticks to discussing the weather over the dinner table.

Still, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t efforts to include her.

“We’re about to watch a movie,” Jawbone says, standing in her doorway. Aelwyn already knew this information—it’s Sunday, and movie night is a Sunday tradition in Mordred Manor. Everyone usually piles onto the couch at first, but slowly they devolve into a giggling, squirming pile of entangled limbs on the floor that somewhat resembles a gibbering mouther. Rarely does the movie actually get watched. Aelwyn never comes to movie night, but Jawbone always takes care to invite her, looking so sincere that Aelwyn feels a pang in her chest. “We’d really like it if you’d join us.”

She’s about to respond, her mouth open to tell him _I’m okay_ , or _I’m a little busy reading, but maybe next time_ , or _please just stop trying_ , when Jawbone cuts her off.

“It would mean a lot to Adaine,” and, well, Aelwyn is barely treading water through her guilt as it is. She just swallows and nods mutely, silently following Jawbone down the winding hallways to the living room like a woman walking toward her own execution. It’s going to be miserable—she knows it is—but she owes it to Adaine to try to be the sister Adaine asked her to be.

When she actually reaches the living room, however, it’s so much worse than Aelwyn imagined. Her heart rockets up to her throat, panic tightening her chest in a way more characteristic of Adaine than herself, because she is looking at a minefield of volatile seating possibilities.

Adaine is already sandwiched between Riz and Ragh on the couch, because _all_ of the Bad Kids and their assorted sidekicks are here. All of the Bad Kids who Aelwyn either tried to kill personally, or otherwise almost killed through her actions.

Fuck.

She’s weighing the merits of sitting next to Fabian (who doesn’t hate her, but. Well.) against the more appealing option of just bolting out of the room when Adaine nudges Fig, who is already sitting on the floor in front of her, with her foot. Fig scoots over, and there is suddenly space on the nest of blankets directly in front of Adaine’s spot on the couch.

“Sit here,” Adaine says, eyes hard and determined like she fully expects Aelwyn to say no. Like she hasn’t—not to be dramatic—just saved Aelwyn’s life by making the decision for her.

“Sure,” Aelwyn says, and folds her legs delicately under herself on the duvet. She rests her back against the couch and tries to take deep breaths without anyone else noticing, mouth barely open as she tries to gulp in air to calm herself down.

Jawbone, meanwhile, beams at the full house and curls up in the cozy armchair he’s sharing with Sandra Lynn (despite it being far too small for two people). He pulls up Fantasy Netflix and selects something, probably a movie that the group chose earlier that Aelwyn lost her opportunity to vote on. She resigns herself to two hours of being unable to pay attention to the film. Really, she doubts she will be able to pay attention to anything other than her own body. She feels too big for the space she’s in, feels gangly and awkward when her elbow touches Fig’s, or when Adaine’s bouncing right leg brushes against her shoulder.

She’s wondering how long she has to wait until a bathroom break would be a believable excuse to escape for a minute, or how many times she can get up for a drink or a snack without arousing suspicion. Oh God, what if this is the kind of movie where she’s expected to make fun of it, and she’ll have nothing to say, and—

and Aelwyn feels hands in her hair. She jumps out of her skin at the contact, trying to pull away until she hears Adaine say, “calm down, dude, I’m just gonna braid it.”

The hands continue moving in her hair and Aelwyn forces herself to sit still, even though she’s sure Adaine can feel the way tension is knotting up her shoulders. It’s a nice gesture, after all. A sisterly gesture. Aelwyn owes it to Adaine to be patient and accept this for what it is, however ill at ease she may be.

Soon enough, though, Aelwyn feels herself relax at the sensation of blunt nails running over her scalp. It’s tender in a way she isn’t used to, and that alone makes her uncomfortable, but it’s also…nice, in a strange way. No one has ever done this for her before, and there’s something in the repetitive motion that feels like being cared for. Once Adaine reaches the ends of Aelwyn’s hair (which took a while, Aelwyn guesses, but it didn’t seem like it), she takes the hair tie that’s holding her own ponytail up and uses it to secure her work.

“Can you pause it?” Adaine asks to the group at large as she smooths her hands down the sides of Aelwyn’s head. “I have to use the bathroom.”

“Of course!” Jawbone says, grinning the way he always does, “I could use a snack break myself.”

When she comes back, Adaine says, “let’s switch places, and you can do my hair.”

Adaine moves to sit on the floor, and Aelwyn’s hands shake a little as she realizes that she’s only ever braided her own hair, that she isn’t quite sure how to replicate the motions on another person’s scalp. But she isn’t going to deny Adaine this moment, so she nestles herself on the couch between Riz and Ragh. She carefully angles her body so as to minimize any contact with them and tries her best to do to Adaine what she does to her own hair.

“Ouch!” Adaine yelps immediately, leaning forward out of Aelwyn’s reach. “Pull a little harder, why don’t you?”

“Sorry,” Aelwyn says, but she has to smother a snort at Adaine’s indignation. She must not do a great job, because Adaine slaps her leg lightly.

“Whatever, just make me beautiful _without_ the sadism, please.” Aelwyn can’t see Adaine roll her eyes, but she knows it must be happening as Adaine relaxes back against the couch.

“Aye, aye, captain.”

It doesn’t go _great_ , but she does, technically, braid Adaine’s hair. She’s much more careful with the force she uses, trying her best to be gentle with her sister’s head. It leads to a loose, messy final product, which isn’t particularly stylish and probably is not the look that Adaine was hoping for. In any case, though, she doesn’t complain about Aelwyn’s too-harsh hands a second time, and the room is dark enough that Aelwyn’s handiwork isn’t really visible to anyone but Aelwyn.

“All right, thank you,” Adaine says as Aelwyn takes a hair tie from her wrist to hold the braid. Then, she looks sternly up at Aelwyn. “Now gimme my spot back.”

“You think I’m going back to the hardwood? As if,” Aelwyn scoffs as she relaxes into the cushions. Something in her chest unwinds when she realizes that it came out the way it was supposed to, light and teasing and silly. She realizes, too, that at some point she stopped being so aware of her limbs in relation to the boys on either side of her, her knee now casually resting against Ragh’s thigh.

“Fine,” Adaine shrugs. “If that’s how you want to play it,” and she proceeds to lie down on top of Riz, Aelwyn, and Ragh. Riz squawks and almost fumbles the bowl of popcorn he’s holding; Ragh just laughs and starts petting Adaine’s head. Aelwyn goes silent with shock, initially, but at Ragh’s cue, she starts laughing too.

It’s not particularly comfortable, but Aelwyn finds herself enjoying the second half of the film. After the credits roll and the yawning teenagers stumble off to find places to sleep, she finds herself thinking, _maybe I could do this again_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is much longer than the other chapters, and idk if that will continue, but it is a thing! anyway i love the idea of adaine just like...trying to do stereotypical sister things bc she doesn't know how to be sisters organically.


End file.
